


The Same River Twice

by Sixthlight



Series: Recognition [2]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Royalty, Family Drama, Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:41:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27332089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sixthlight/pseuds/Sixthlight
Summary: Nicolò spends the night before they are due to arrive in the port of Genoa talking to himself in Ligurian.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: Recognition [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1995580
Comments: 25
Kudos: 594





	The Same River Twice

Nicolò spends the night before they are due to arrive in the port of Genoa talking to himself in Ligurian. It has been fifteen years since he spoke it with any regularity. Latin he has used often enough, in the vibrant court of a country which trades from one end to the other of the Roman Sea. But his mother-tongue; that he has had less cause for.

“Are you talking to yourself?” asks Yusuf. There isn’t really what you’d call privacy on the ship, but they have a small space, the benefits of being the heir and his consort.

“Yes,” Nicolò says. “It has been too long since I spoke it.”

“Speak to me, instead,” Yusuf says, in the same language. It should possibly be somewhat embarrassing that his grammar isn’t much worse than Nicolò’s. “Lest you sound to everybody else like a madman.”

“I trust everybody on this ship,” Nicolò says. “I’d have to do a lot more than talk to myself for them to decide I’d gone mad.”

“I trust everybody on this ship too,” says Yusuf, “and not a few of them are worried about you, and how you will take returning to Genoa.”

“What you mean is, _you_ are worried.”

“You don’t have to tell me your thoughts, but if you wish to…I am here.”

“You know my thoughts,” Nicolò says, settling against his husband, letting the gentle rocking of the ship lull them; they are anchored for the night. “They have been sending us embassies for five years; they want these negotiations very badly; and my father is dead. It is worth making the attempt. If they go poorly…well, we can afford for them to go poorly; it is not a bad position to be in.”

“Those are my mother’s arguments,” Yusuf says, quietly, his hands gentle.

“Your mother is a very wise ruler, and in this case I agree with her on all points.”

“You did not have to come.”

“ _You_ were always going to, so of course I had to.”

“Fine,” says Yusuf. “Fifteen years, and there has been no word asking after you; and you expect me to believe that makes no difference?”

“It makes every difference.” This is an old wound, and it has long since scabbed over, faded to a scar. Nicolò has belonged to Tunis, and Yusuf, for as long as he was ever Nicolò of Genoa. He has found, as they have sailed north, that large parts of his childhood have grown hazy, the memories untouched for so long. “And it makes no difference, because they will do what they will when we arrive, and until we arrive, what is the point in trying to predict it? We only need to know how we will react, after.”

“I do not think I ever asked.” Yusuf threads his fingers through Nicolò’s. “When did you know that you wouldn’t be returning?”

“I always knew.” Nicolò turns his face, so Yusuf’s head is tucked under his. “I always knew, because they sent me away telling me so, telling me –” He pauses. “Well, you don’t need to hear what else they told me was going to happen to me, because it was untrue and unkind. But I spent my first two years at your mother’s court, after I realised she believed I was there as a fosterling, in sheer terror that the truth would be discovered and I would be sent away.”

“I knew that, my heart,” Yusuf says into his neck. “Because I remember the look on your face when my mother told you that you could stay as long as you pleased. And I remember the sheer terror _I_ had, when I worried that you might be pretending affection for me in order to make sure you could stay.”

Nicolò snorts. “ _Now_ , that might make sense. Then, everyone still knew you would be your mother’s heir, but it was very obvious where all the power lay; I would not have pretended affection for _you_ in order to achieve that.”

Yusuf groans, and punches Nicolò lightly in the arm. “No. No, take that back, I do _not_ need to imagine that –”

“Make me,” Nicolò says gleefully, and the next few moments are all frantic scuffling, which is much more difficult in the confines of a ship, even if they are not in a hammock, and prolonged because they have been doing this one way or another since they were striplings and know each other’s tricks too well. Nicolò ends up on top, but it is a near thing; Yusuf’s last twist of his hips nearly throws him across the tiny cabin.

“ _Now_ what am I going to do with you,” Nicolò muses to himself, dragging a thumb across Yusuf’s mouth. Yusuf tips his head back, his eyes fluttering closed. Nicolò finds he has slipped back into Arabic; he cannot make love to Yusuf in Ligurian. He never has.

“I have some suggestions,” Yusuf says. “If you’re interested.”

“I’m listening,” Nicolò says, and leans down to bite at the junction of Yusuf’s throat and his shoulder. Yusuf stutters out his next few words, his hips rolling up against Nicolò, but this time not to throw him off.

They don’t talk about Genoa again that night.

*

The next day the Count of Genoa and his retinue greet them at the docks, a sign of great favour, and how badly they want this alliance. Nicolò recognises his brothers instantly; Godfrey was a man grown when Nicolò left anyway, and the years have merely given him more grey in his hair. Marco has changed more, being only a year or two older than Nicolò, but he is still recognisable. It is somehow strange to see them in the garb of Frankish lords. Of course that is what they are wearing; that is what they are; that is how Nicolò remembers them, though the fashions have changed somewhat. But in some strange trick of memory, over fifteen years, Nicolò finds he had expected them to look like…he glances from side to side, though he does not move his head. Like they are part of the court he belongs to, because they are his family. Fifteen years has not changed where or who he was born.

Marco and Godfrey’s eyes pass over him exactly the same way they do over the rest of the party, no recognition in them at all. Nicolò didn’t know he was hoping for something different until it happens. It’s not painful, exactly. More a dull sort of disappointment, a bitter taste in his mouth. He had been prepared for surprise, for disbelief, maybe in his heart of hearts hoped for remorse. Not for a complete absence of knowledge. 

Yusuf looks at him for the briefest of moments, and whatever he sees, it’s enough for him to begin speaking in Arabic; Lykon steps forward hastily, to translate. There is no point in giving the Genoese any advantage here that they do not have to.

They stand there under the Genoese sun, on the shore of the same sea that laps at the shores of Tunis, in the city of Nicolò’s birth, and he has never felt further from home.

**Author's Note:**

> clearing out my "I wrote this and then moved onto the next thing" file


End file.
